subaudition
by bellmare
Summary: subaudition; an act or instance of understanding or mentally supplying something not expressed. —Xigbar.


Every time he glances at his own reflection, Braig is reminded of the fact that he is no longer Braig, apprentice of Ansem the Wise, but Xigbar the Nobody, the Freeshooter. His hair is longer now, and he isn't _quite_ as young as he used to be, and eventually, he gives up on trying to think otherwise. He gives up on keeping with old appearances, and grows a ponytail which Vexen irritably threatens to chop off in his sleep. He gives up on the oils he once used to slick his hair back every morning, gives up on that irritating glass eye which sticks horribly in place every now and then. He gives up on poking and prodding at his scars, and instead wears each and every one like a badge of pride, relaying far-fetched stories about their origins to the new recruits with great gusto.

His reactions are still as fast as ever, though to his growing irritation, his eyesight isn't _quite _as sharp as it once used to be – perhaps it is due to his loss of depth perception, perhaps it is due to his getting shortsighted. Either way, he tells himself, it's too early for him to be deteriorating so – but perhaps that is a part of being a Nobody? After all, if they violate the laws of Nature itself by existing, so what makes him think they are exempt from being forcibly twisted back into compliance?

It has only been ten years since their great Fall, and yet it feels as though it has been forever. After a long stint spent loitering in other worlds and shooting down Heartless, his bones start aching with weariness sooner, his old scars start smarting dully after one too many cold mornings, and perhaps this is a sign of some semblance of normality returning to their lives.

It is almost as though Time is reclaiming them.

It seems, in an effort to get them to forget who they once were, their bodies responded to their thoughts, leaving behind features and characteristics that are no longer recognisable. Most notably of all, Zexion found his tongue again, and in the months after their arrival in the City of Shadows, spent innumerable hours cooped up in the library, an array of books surrounding him like an impenetrable fortress. Colouring-books – plundered from far-off worlds invaded by an enterprising Xaldin – and ancient lexicons rose around him in dusty piles, in addition to an unnerving collection of immense, leather-bound books outlining the principles of quantum mechanics and astrophysics, books which should not even be _touched_ by twelve-year-old children, and Zexion devoured them all without any trace of bias, until one by one the stack dwindled into the carpet.

In addition to that, he had gotten into the unfortunate habit of nicking touristy phrase-books and reading every single expression aloud; the boy had rattled off a list of greetings in a disinterested undertone and paid scant attention to what he was saying, driving Xigbar crazy. It's wrong, all wrong, to hear polite discourses on the weather being uttered in an indifferent drone, to see features glazed with detachment, eyes cold and lifeless as smooth river-pebbles scarcely blinking as he flicked idly through pages of phrases and pleasantries. If anything, becoming a Nobody made Zexion even more infuriating than Ienzo once was—the smugness was still there, every bit of it, only multiplied tenfold and his cool, calculating intelligence was out of place in the body and mind of what should rightfully be a sneeringly jaded teenager.

If Ienzo was an obnoxious, somewhat odious little snot before – or maybe it was just his only _slightly somewhat_ holier-than-thou silence – then he is even more insufferable now. Gone are his quick, lively surges of excitement and emotion—hastily-stifled, occasional glimpses of insight into his thoughts which came fairly regularly when they first arrived in the reverse world: Zexion is quietly calculative, and is oftentimes several steps in front of them, though Xigbar prides himself on being able to second-guess the younger man at almost every given instant.

Vexen, too, is different, has changed in more ways than one; always angular before, he is positively gaunt now. Somewhat cordial in the past, his temperament has soured dramatically, and he constantly harps on about data which does not match up. All that is gone now, and he is quicker to anger than before, and several times as acerbic to boot; already wry and impassive before, whatever paltry sense of humour he once had is gone, and in its stead is only scornful amusement and tight-lipped derision. Perhaps it is his version of a defence mechanism, this handing out of periodic doses of vitriol and caustic sarcasm with impunity: he only sneers when Xigbar jokingly brings the topic up, and sends a barrage of icicle darts at the fleeing sniper's head once he tires of trading insults.

As the days, months and years wear on, Vexen spends an increasing amount of time cooped up in his subterranean laboratory, and rarely surfaces except when on the hunt for a quick bite of food. Sure, the city may be riddled with perpetual storms and shadows, but that does not mean he _had_ to spend every waking hour skulking amongst test-tubes and pungent chemicals, slowly losing his mind to the ceaseless monotony. He grows paler and tetchier than ever, liable to snap at any given instant, and no longer bothers with safety when in the midst of conducting experiments – he ditches the protective crystal-lensed goggles and the heavy canvas gloves, ceases tying his hair out of his face (Xigbar reckons it has something to do with his own oh-so-fetching hairdo, which Vexen is too proud to emulate; either way, it's only _his_ great loss if his not-so-luscious locks are singed by experiments gone awry, is it not?) and just plain stops giving a damn.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that now, they die somewhat differently.

Or maybe it's just him. Xigbar could never see the allure of the indoors, and whilst Even would much rather have stayed indoors to puzzle over calculations involving laws of thermodynamics and attempt figuring out the mysteries of entropy, Braig would be outside every chance he got, teasing the Bastion maids and stealing food from the kitchens, arm-wrestling with knights-in-training and stealing away to tinker with machinery he is expressly forbidden from touching.

Like Vexen, Xemnas never seems to sleep any more, and every time the sniper sees him, the other man looks tired and wild-eyed; stress—but _what _could he possibly be stressed about?—has bleached his hair to a ghostly silver-white, and he no longer bothers with keeping himself as quite neat as before. He seems almost distracted, and no longer confides in Xigbar, detailing all his grand plans and ambitions; gone is his fascination with the world, and in its stead is only lust for power, bitter and all-consuming. His endless spiels have grown longer now, and as he stalks around their fortress-of-sorts like a particularly restless spectre, Xigbar can no longer even summon the energy to _pretend_ to pay attention.

If anything, Xemnas notices nothing except for the odd phenomena of the Dark City around him, and does not even bat an eyelid when Xigbar switches the labels on the salt and sugar pots around—he merely gulps down sodium-saturated coffee with an air of vague preoccupation, whilst Vexen chokes on his own cup and hisses like a wet cat in all his apoplectic fury. He spends more time chasing shadowless dreams and faceless phantoms of the forgotten past than he does on anything else, and more than once, Xigbar finds himself wondering how his old friend spends his days up in his distant office, so far removed from the rest of the Castle.

Sometimes, he wonders if Xemnas will even notice if they are all gone, if the five people tethering him to this plane of existence vanish. What will happen to the forgotten vagrant of the worlds lost to the Heartless, gone astray and cast adrift by his very own actions?

What will happen then, if Xemna—no, if _Xehanort_ noticed all of his fellow apprentices gone, faded into the nothingness which awaits them all?

_What would he do?_ Try as he might, Xigbar cannot force an answer out from the depths of his mind. It's a mark of how much they have changed, every single one of them, and even if they don't notice it, they're changing even more day by day.

How long will it be until they all become unrecognisable, even to themselves?

Out of them all, Lexaeus and Xaldin have changed the least. The lancer's voice has deepened to a gravelly baritone – as though he has taken the unfortunate habit of gargling vodka in the mornings – and he engages more in tiresome rhetoric than ever before, until his long, meaningless diatribes come to rival even Xemnas's own in length and sheer yawn-inducing boredom. At times, he is nearly as irritable as Vexen, brusque and disinclined to a spot of friendly chitchat, but during the rare instances that they are sent out on missions together, Xigbar can almost pretend things are the way they always used to be. For a few glorious hours, they're kids again, and they're not Xigbar and Xaldin but Braig and Dilan, and he's teasing his friend about his odd accent, bugging him to teach him his combat moves, listening to stories of the Land of Dragons being relayed to him, and remembering to ooh and ahh at the appropriate intervals.

For a while, they slip back into the old patterns they followed, patterns which carried forth from youth to adulthood, which leaches into their existence as Nobodies. For a while, it's easy to forget who they are and what they've become as they race one another through worlds like breathless children, feeling the wind bite at their faces, the dizzying sensation of space warping and twisting to accommodate them.

It is only once they are back in the stifling silence of the Castle that they remember.

As for Lexaeus, he retreats to his research, attempting to find patterns in the jumble, working through information with remorseless dedication and concentration, never faltering despite the patterns that refuse to obey the laws of logic. If anything, he remains like that unshakable rock which they are all tethered to, and sometimes Xigbar thinks he is the one who remains the sanest out of them, the only one who hasn't been touched by the ghost of mad flights of fancy.

After all, _almost _every single one of them have been seized by these accursedly treacherous, capricious fits of whimsy, and even Xigbar himself has to grudgingly admit the fact that he is the one who is initially the most enamoured by his surroundings, and drags a protesting Xaldin around in order to explore the rain-drenched streets better. His enthrallment continues unabated until Xemnas himself takes interest, whereupon the novelty of exploring and poking around in alleyways and idly shooting at the denizens of darkness wears off.

"He's just _got_ to steal my thunder," Xigbar snipes with feigned incredulity, whilst Xaldin ignores him in favour of methodically peeling and dissecting his satsumas with a butterknife.

And yet, if Xemnas is the unknown – exotic, dangerous, fascinating in its enigmatic majesty – then Lexaeus has rightfully got to be the opposite: constant and stalwart, steadfast and grounded, it's like he is the conduit, the middleman, between their frequent differences in opinion. He is as silent as ever, ruminative and careful in speech and manner, and even though it seems as though he does not pay attention to what goes on around him, Xigbar knows he sees everything which goes on, and more.

Aeleus had always had an affinity for data analysis, and was especially good at essay-writing and interpretation of information. Whilst Even was more comfortable with formulae which were concrete and rigidly-defined, Xehanort and Ienzo favoured the more abstract concepts which had answers that were neither right nor wrong, and Braig disliked anything which involved too much writing and not enough physics, calculus and trigonometry, Aeleus had always been the one who could make sense of things with an ease that they all envied.

Without him keeping them all firmly chained to reality – whether forcibly or not – Xigbar reckons they would all have gone mad years ago, driven insane by the eccentricities of a distorted mirror-world which disobeyed all laws of logic, or else by Xemnas's irritating habits and mannerisms.

All of them have tried, and failed, to make sense in their existence, but in the end, it all amounts to nothing.

No matter how they try to reassure themselves, no matter how they surround themselves with the solidarity of knowledge, Xigbar knows it is only a matter of time before the ground vanishes from underneath them.

Until then, they will continue with their established patterns, patterns of a half-life which seems robbed of meaning.

**- - x x x x x - -**

**epilogue. **_Written using a prompt from kh_drabble on LiveJournal. Related to _Burial_. Usual disclaimers apply._


End file.
